Search All 1 Records in Our Collections

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The Museum’s Collections document the fate of Holocaust victims, survivors, rescuers, liberators, and others through artifacts, documents, photos, films, books, personal stories, and more. Search below to view digital records and find material that you can access at our library and at the Shapell Center.

Videotape testimony of Irwin L., who was born in Borislav, Poland in 1925. He recalls his extended family's prewar life; brief German invasion, followed by Soviet occupation; German occupation in 1941; fleeing with his father and brother to Dnipropetrovsʹk, then to Rostov, Stalingrad, Astrakhanʹ, and Ferganskai︠a︡ oblastʹ; working in a small village; hunger and disease; his father's death in 1942; his brother being drafted into the Soviet army in 1944; learning of his mother's and sister's deaths; and returning to Poland in 1946. Mr. L. describes living in a kibbutz in Szczecin, then in Bielawa Dolna; receiving assistance from Beriḥah to flee to Vienna in 1946; living in the Bindermichl displaced persons camp; traveling to Mirano, Milan, and a displaced persons camp in Turin; applying for a visa to the United States in Bari in 1948; attending an ORT school; and emigration to the United States in 1949. Mr. L. discusses early memories of his family; their inability to imagine that women and children would be killed under German occupation; his comparison of Soviet and German occupation; and relations with his children.

Learn about over 1,000 camps and ghettos in Volume I and II of this encyclopedia, which are available as a free PDF download. This reference provides text, photographs, charts, maps, and extensive indexes.